Research & Evaluation

BTC’s Research and Evaluation team works collaboratively with organizations to develop research questions, logic models, and approaches that work best for them. We’ll work with you to co-design an evaluation that successfully and cost-effectively meets your goals and needs. We use systems of measurement that meet scientific standards, and mixed methods that corroborate and add layers of meaning to findings. We build on organizations’ existing data and data collection approaches to make the best use of available resources and organizational knowledge. Our Community-Based Participatory Research approach is reflected in all our collaborations.

Approach: Co-constructed and Relational

We are known for multi-cultural research and applied evaluation work. In many of our projects, we use a Community-Based Participatory Research approach. With relational, interdisciplinary, and mixed-method research designs, we co-create processes with our partners to collect and analyze e-data that drive our shared recommendations. We rely on goal-directed partnerships as our non-presumptive and effective approach to understanding:

• Child development outcomes
• Staff and family strengths support and needs 
• Gaps in and innovative approaches to resource access
• Programming, intervention development, implementation, and scaling
• Intervention short-term and longitudinal impacts on children, families, providers, organizations and communities

Our approach is designed to generate locally contextualized and actionable strategies that promote:

• Best practices
• Sustainable program, organizational, and system capacity 
• Culturally resonant and affirming adaptations
• Resource equity
• Pathways to effective scaling
• Sound policy

Whole Child, Whole Family, Whole Community Approach

BTC’s whole child, whole family, and whole community approach is based on an ecosystemic understanding of human development. As a result, our research and evaluation team is multidisciplinary and promotes cross-sector connections and collaboration. Our broad range of expertise enables us to build strong partnerships across diverse fields, including:

• Child and adolescent mental health and wellness
• Child development and child assessment
• Early childhood care and education
• Early Intervention
• Early relational health, mental health, and mental health consultation, including parent and infant mental health and mental health services 
• Family well-being, including families facing adversity, parent and infant mental health, and child welfare
• Head Start and Early Head Start
• Home visiting
• Maternal, perinatal, and pediatric health 
• Medical education, including nursing and pediatric residency education programs
• Parent, family, and community engagement 
• Trauma-informed and healing-centered care, policy, and practice
• Staff and organizational quality service and well-being

Examples of the kinds of expertise we bring to our work in these fields include:

• Community capacity building, including staff well-being, coaching and mentoring strategies, program, and classroom quality improvement, equity and disparities, professional development
• Data systems customization, development, and implementation
• Environmental and landscape scans
• Grant proposal development and writing
• Literature reviews, including mapping, scoping, and syntheses
• Organizational continuous quality improvement
• Professional development program design, implementation, and outcome measurement
• Proposal development, including data analyses, longitudinal analyses, data systems development and implementation, logic model development and design, and strategic planning and needs assessment
• Workforce assessment and development

Individually Tailored Methods, Processes, and Tools

We work closely with each partner to co-create individually tailored research designs; implementation plans; and data interpretation, reporting, and dissemination processes. Examples of methods, processes, and tools we adapt for each project include: 

Formative Evaluation	Summative Evaluation
Process Evaluation	Economic/Cost-Benefit Evaluation
Short Cycle Evaluation	Outcome/Impact Evaluations
Literature Reviews & Syntheses	Case Studies
Environmental/Landscape Scans	Secondary Analyses
Data Synthesis/Report Writing	Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Studies
Quasi-Experimental Studies	Randomized Control Trial (RCT) Studies

We also offer Technical Assistance in grant development and proposal writing, organizational logic modeling, strategic planning, and continuous quality improvement system development

Methodology

We provide consultation on quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods evaluations, and use scientifically sound and proven methods of analysis.

Quantitative analysis methods include both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs, for example:

• ANOVA/MANOVA
• Confirmatory Factor Analysis
• Individual and Latent Growth Modeling
• Multilevel/Hierarchical Modeling
• Multiple Regression Analysis
• Path Analysis
• Principal Components Analysis/Exploratory Factor Analysis
• Propensity Scoring
• Repeated Measures ANOVA
• Structural Equation Modeling
• Survival/Time to Event Analysis

Qualitative methods and approaches include, for example:

• Ethnography
• Focus groups and interviews (e.g., with participants and shareholders)
• Grounded theory
• Thematic analysis

A Sampling of Organizational Partners

The BTC Research and Evaluation team partners with a wide range of organizations, communities, philanthropic foundations, and sovereign Tribal nations. Our partners include:

BTC’s Research and Evaluation team produces reports and other publications in collaboration with our partners.

View examples of our work here.

Learn how we can partner with you on a Tribal MIECHV grant or Project LAUNCH grant. Download the flyers.

Learn More About Ways to Partner with Us. Contact Catherine Ayoub, EdD, MN, Director of Research and Evaluation.